1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electrophotographic image forming technique applied to printers, copiers, facsimiles and the like, and more particularly to an image forming technique adopting a liquid development as a development system.
2. Description of the Related Art
There has conventionally been known an electrophotographic image forming apparatus which operates as follows. A charged photosensitive member is exposed to light by exposure device so as to form an electrostatic latent image thereon. Development device causes toner to adhere to the photosensitive member thereby visualizing the electrostatic latent image into a toner image. The resultant toner image is primarily transferred onto an intermediate transfer medium such as an intermediate transfer belt or intermediate transfer drum. The toner image on the intermediate transfer medium is transported to a secondary transferring position, at which the toner image is secondarily transferred to a recording medium such as a transfer sheet. As a development system adopted by the development device, there is known a liquid development system using liquid developer with toner dispersed in carrier liquid. The liquid development system has advantages that the liquid developer provides high-resolution images because an average particle diameter of toner is 0.1 to 2 μm, that the liquid developer provides uniform images because of high liquidity of the solution, and such. In this connection, a variety of image forming apparatuses of the liquid development system have been proposed.
For instance, an image forming apparatus disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2002-296918 is designed to improve image quality by removing excessive liquid developer, or particularly an excessive carrier liquid from the intermediate transfer medium before the developed image (toner image) is transferred to the recording medium such as the transfer material.
According to an image forming apparatus disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2001-228717, a removing member such as formed of a roller is provided between a development position and a transferring position. The removing member is applied with a bias voltage higher than a potential of a toner layer but lower than a potential of the photosensitive member (non-image area), thereby removing excessive toner from the photosensitive member, prior to the transfer of the developed image (toner image) to the recording medium such as a transfer sheet. In this manner, the image is prevented from sustaining fogs and image quality is improved.